Graywolf
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Cannabis acetate is a cannabis medication that we have been experimenting with, because it passes the blood brain barrier so much faster than the cannabis oil it was made from. The effect is an abrupt arrival of effects, vis a vis coming on.
Aspirin and heroin are both examples of a medication whose effectiveness was significantly improved by converting into an acetate. The process that we developed, is in fact based on aspirin production.
I became interested in cannabis acetate after reading Cannabis Alchemy, by Gold, who proffered 3X potency, but after experimenting with it, have decided that it isn't necessarily more potent, but certainly appears that way with its sudden onslaught.
As fate would have it, at about that same time, our resident biochemistry student was learning to make aspirin in class, so I asked him to look at the process and make recommendations. What he discovered, is that the formula Gold proffers, was probably based on heroin production, given the mole ratios he used, and certainly called for safety measures not currently taught in current chemistry curriculums.
The process uses acetic anhydride, which is vinegar with no water in it, and is both highly corrosive as a acid and about as inflammable as hexane or gasoline. It does require good laboratory practices, as is commonly used with concentrated acids and flammable liquids.
Good lab practices are beyond the scope of this post, so may I disclaim by observing that if you haven't had chemistry lab training, you should do so before attempting this procedure.
Acetic anhydride can also be used to make explosives, as well as heroin, so expect to end up on a watch list if you purchase any. It hasn't been a problem for us to obtain in limited quantities from the local scientific supply store as a registered medical research business, and being on the DEA and ATF watch list isn't of concern, but consider that when you purchase any.
Now that we have had an opportunity to make cannabis acetate enough times to get the same thing each time, I thought I'll share our process with ya'll. Probably not refined as far as it can be, but works every time.
Our last production, we started by dissolving 10.4 grams of BHO into 16.5 grams of hexane, to remove it from the storage container with an unknown tare, so as to not waste any left behind in films and to get an accurate weight. We warmed the mixture in a hot water bath to increase dissolution rate.
When dissolved, we decanted into a beaker with a known tare and weighed the total amount, from which we subtracted the beaker tare and the weight of the hexane to get the BHO weight of 10.4 grams.
We then poured that into a one liter boiling flask. To that we added 25 ml of acetic anhydride and 1.25 ml of 98% sulfuric acid.
We placed the boiling flask on a combination hot plate stirrer, and added a stirring bar to the mixture.
We added an Alhin condenser to the flask, through which we pumped ice water, and reflux boiled the mixture for one hour while stirring.
After refluxing for one hour, we added 40 ml of water to react the remaining acetic anhydride, and another 40 ml of hexane. We poured that into a separatory funnel, which we finished filling with saturated salt water.
After shaking well, we allowed the layers to separate and bled off the lower water emulsion layer, only to refill with salt water again and repeat the procedure until we had run about 4 liters of salt water through the mixture.
After bleeding off the salt water one last time, we bled the hexane mixture into a beaker and after filtering through a 0.2 micron syringe filter, we boiled off the hexane using the hot plate stirrer, with the beaker sitting in a larger beaker half full of water.
Just before the hexane was gone, I refilled the beaker to the half way mark with 190 proof ethanol and boiled that off. I repeated the alcohol wash three times to insure the removal of the rest of the hexane.
Human hexane odor sensory threshold is 130 ppm and taste as low as 30 ppm, with an LD-50 (rat) of 48,000 ppm vapor, or 2500 mg/kg oral, so you will taste or smell any residual hexane, well before it becomes a health issue.
Hexane tastes and smell like gasoline. If you still taste hexane, redissolve in ethanol and distill or boil it off again.
The resulting acetate is of a lighter color than the original oil and of lower viscosity.
It received high marks by the volunteer patient test panel for both the pain relief that we were testing for, and head effect. Because of its sudden arrival, the most common comment was actually, "Oh wow".
The flavor is best described as burning photograph records, but is still pleasant and it is extremely smooth to vaporize as compared to raw BHO oleoresin extracts or even absolutes.
Besides vaporizing, it the best thing I've found for E-Cigs and works impressively in topical or oral meds as well.
Aspirin and heroin are both examples of a medication whose effectiveness was significantly improved by converting into an acetate. The process that we developed, is in fact based on aspirin production.
I became interested in cannabis acetate after reading Cannabis Alchemy, by Gold, who proffered 3X potency, but after experimenting with it, have decided that it isn't necessarily more potent, but certainly appears that way with its sudden onslaught.
As fate would have it, at about that same time, our resident biochemistry student was learning to make aspirin in class, so I asked him to look at the process and make recommendations. What he discovered, is that the formula Gold proffers, was probably based on heroin production, given the mole ratios he used, and certainly called for safety measures not currently taught in current chemistry curriculums.
The process uses acetic anhydride, which is vinegar with no water in it, and is both highly corrosive as a acid and about as inflammable as hexane or gasoline. It does require good laboratory practices, as is commonly used with concentrated acids and flammable liquids.
Good lab practices are beyond the scope of this post, so may I disclaim by observing that if you haven't had chemistry lab training, you should do so before attempting this procedure.
Acetic anhydride can also be used to make explosives, as well as heroin, so expect to end up on a watch list if you purchase any. It hasn't been a problem for us to obtain in limited quantities from the local scientific supply store as a registered medical research business, and being on the DEA and ATF watch list isn't of concern, but consider that when you purchase any.
Now that we have had an opportunity to make cannabis acetate enough times to get the same thing each time, I thought I'll share our process with ya'll. Probably not refined as far as it can be, but works every time.
Our last production, we started by dissolving 10.4 grams of BHO into 16.5 grams of hexane, to remove it from the storage container with an unknown tare, so as to not waste any left behind in films and to get an accurate weight. We warmed the mixture in a hot water bath to increase dissolution rate.
When dissolved, we decanted into a beaker with a known tare and weighed the total amount, from which we subtracted the beaker tare and the weight of the hexane to get the BHO weight of 10.4 grams.
We then poured that into a one liter boiling flask. To that we added 25 ml of acetic anhydride and 1.25 ml of 98% sulfuric acid.
We placed the boiling flask on a combination hot plate stirrer, and added a stirring bar to the mixture.
We added an Alhin condenser to the flask, through which we pumped ice water, and reflux boiled the mixture for one hour while stirring.
After refluxing for one hour, we added 40 ml of water to react the remaining acetic anhydride, and another 40 ml of hexane. We poured that into a separatory funnel, which we finished filling with saturated salt water.
After shaking well, we allowed the layers to separate and bled off the lower water emulsion layer, only to refill with salt water again and repeat the procedure until we had run about 4 liters of salt water through the mixture.
After bleeding off the salt water one last time, we bled the hexane mixture into a beaker and after filtering through a 0.2 micron syringe filter, we boiled off the hexane using the hot plate stirrer, with the beaker sitting in a larger beaker half full of water.
Just before the hexane was gone, I refilled the beaker to the half way mark with 190 proof ethanol and boiled that off. I repeated the alcohol wash three times to insure the removal of the rest of the hexane.
Human hexane odor sensory threshold is 130 ppm and taste as low as 30 ppm, with an LD-50 (rat) of 48,000 ppm vapor, or 2500 mg/kg oral, so you will taste or smell any residual hexane, well before it becomes a health issue.
Hexane tastes and smell like gasoline. If you still taste hexane, redissolve in ethanol and distill or boil it off again.
The resulting acetate is of a lighter color than the original oil and of lower viscosity.
It received high marks by the volunteer patient test panel for both the pain relief that we were testing for, and head effect. Because of its sudden arrival, the most common comment was actually, "Oh wow".
The flavor is best described as burning photograph records, but is still pleasant and it is extremely smooth to vaporize as compared to raw BHO oleoresin extracts or even absolutes.
Besides vaporizing, it the best thing I've found for E-Cigs and works impressively in topical or oral meds as well.
